If this is your first visit, be sure to
check out the FAQ by clicking the
link above. You may have to register
before you can post: click the register link above to proceed. To start viewing messages,
select the forum that you want to visit from the selection below.

Impeachment

I have asked if anyone knows what could be cause for impeachment. I found this as an addendum to an article in The Daily Mail ...

In the United States, Congress has the sole power to remove the president, vice president, and all other federal office-holders. The House of Representatives drafts Articles of Impeachment as a formal indictment, and the Senate holds a trial and votes on whether to convict.
The Chief Justice of the United States presides over that trial, in which two-thirds of the senators' votes are required to send an official packing.

Article II of the U.S. Constitution provides that federal officials can be impeached for 'Treason, Bribery, or other High Crimes and Misdemeanors.' The latter category is a vague catch-all based on England's idea that a 'high crime' is one that only a public office-holder is in a position to commit.

Future U.S. president Gerald Ford was the House Minority Leader in 1970 when he opined that 'an impeachable offense is whatever a majority of the House of Representatives considers it to be at a given moment in history.'

Of the 19 federal officials impeached in U.S. history, 15 were judges – including one Supreme Court justice. The others included two U.S. presidents, an 18th-century U.S. senator and a 19th-century Secretary of War.

In 1998 and 1999, President Bill Clinton was impeached on perjury and obstruction of justice charges related to his statements under oath about an extramarital affair he had with a White House intern.

A Republican-controlled House of Representatives delivered the impeachment to a Republican-controlled Senate, but the GOP's 55-45 majority there wasn't sufficient. Fifty GOP senators – and no Democrats – voted to remove Clinton on one charge, and 45 on the other.

The Reconstruction-era president Andrew Johnson was impeached in 1868 after he violated the Tenure of Office Act by replacing Secretary of War Edwin Stanton, even though the law was largely written and enacted to protect Stanton's job.

Johnson was acquitted in the U.S. Senate by the narrowest of margins: a single vote.

There is no question that Obama is making and breaking laws that are the purview of the legislative branch. He is acting the tyrant. (See George Will's and more recently Krauthammer's columns. Pretty sober guys. Not exactly Alex Jones territory.) He. Just. Is. His actions are well within the realm of the impeachable. But forget about it. Even if we had the Republican numbers in Congress to get the job done, they don't have the spine (or whatever anatomy it requires.)